


Better with You

by maliwanhellfire



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, blood in chapter two
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:06:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6073381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maliwanhellfire/pseuds/maliwanhellfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of shorts about women who love each-other.</p><p>Chapter One: Things you said when we were on top of the world (Dagna/Sera)<br/>Chapter Two: Things you said after we killed someone (Dalish/Skinner)<br/>Chapter Three: First and last impression (Adaar/Sera)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Things you said when we were on top of the world

Dagna’s been watching the roads since the breach closed. She’s not the only one, but she’s the most consistent. Everyone else in Skyhold has duties to attend to, feasts to prepare for… but Dagna’s work is done. For once there is nothing for her to do, and won’t be until the armory is sorted once again.

She’s elated, and she’s terrified, but she won’t know anything until the messages come in.

 

—

 

Two days later and she still doesn’t know. They’ve gotten casualty estimates, and emergency requisitions. The Inquisitor is still alive, but no talk of her inner circle. Dagna spends her time setting up beds in a makeshift infirmary, ensuring that they’re covered once everyone comes back. 

She drops a hammer on her foot when she hears shouting. She doesn’t even feel it. 

“The Inquisitor’s back!” their sentry yells. “They’re back!”

Ten minutes later she won’t remember how she got to the gate. Time and space feel fractured (though they can’t be, not anymore). She has to stand back, on the stairs, so she can see everyone coming in. She sees the Inquisitor and the Iron Bull first, both a head taller than the rest, and crowned with horns. She looks for blonde hair, and a bow, and pointy ears. 

Sera sees her first. 

“Widdle!” Sera shouts. “ _Widdle!”_

Later on Dorian will tell her she started crying, the moment she locked eyes with Sera. Dagna will tell him he’s been reading too many of Varric’s books.

She does cry though. And she barely makes it to the lowest step before Sera’s there, holding Dagna’s face in her hands and smiling bright like sunlight. 

“Why’re you crying, Widdle?” Sera asks. “We fucking did it!”

“I’m so happy to see you,” Dagna replies, and bursts into tears all over again. 

Sera kisses her forehead, and her cheeks. Sera gently kisses her lips, and then not so gently, and Dagna loves it. Loves her.

“I love the frick out of you,” Sera says. “Got so much to tell you.”

It takes twenty minutes before Dagna can say she loves her back. That’s about the point where she realizes she broke her foot on the bloody hammer.


	2. Things you said after we killed someone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, there's blood in this one.

“Fucking shems,” Skinner said, her cheek still wet with arterial spray. 

Dalish had never seen blood that bright before. She always fought from a distance, and tended to aim for the chest. Didn’t see much from so far away. When she’d been learning about healing, with her clan, she’d been told that injuries with bright, spurting blood were the most serious. She’d never really questioned it, but experience certainly made the knowledge feel more… visceral. 

“Hey,” Skinner said. “Are you alright?”

Dalish opened her mouth. The words did not come. 

Skinner sighed, pulling a rag from her pocket and wiping it over her own face. She didn’t step in close until most of the blood was gone. Dalish kept looking between her and the thing on the ground, the thing that had once been a person. 

“It’s different, isn’t it?” Skinner asked. “When it happens up close?”

Dalish had been with the Chargers for over a year, and other companies before that. Always ranged combat and tactical support. She’d hurt people, and seen people die, but like the Chief always said, _they were assholes_. She didn’t think about them, didn’t remember their faces. 

She didn’t want to remember this. 

“Ma cherie, ma vhenan, look at me. Don’t look down anymore,” Skinner said. 

Dalish looked up at Skinner’s honey-brown eyes, the only soft thing on Skinner’s serious face. Dalish’s breath went easy, and that spoke to how rattled she was, because she had not even noticed her own body go tight and cold. 

Skinner turned the rag over in her hands, and then held it up to brush across Dalish’s face. Dalish let her do it. 

“There,” Skinner said. “We’ll wash your clothes later, need to get some salt.” 

“I really liked this scarf,” Dalish said.

She immediately felt foolish. 

“There will be others,” Skinner replied. “There is only one of you.”

Dalish leant in, looped her arms around Skinner’s waist and hid her face in Skinner’s neck. Skinner let her.


	3. First impression, last impression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "What did Inkuudi think of the characters/situation she was in upon her first contact and her last impression of them/it all at the end of the game.

Ink woke up to aching bones and a splitting head-ache. She was lying on bare stone, the cold of it long seeped in. Her mouth was so dry that it felt like she’d swallowed sand. 

When she tried to sit up, her hands pulled up against a set of metal stocks. 

She choked down her panic. Reached for her mana and found, to her immense relief, that it was present, if somewhat depleted. She tried to pull herself up from the core and didn’t get very far. She had to push back with both hands just to get to her knees. Her left hand hurt almost too badly to put weight on it.

Ink heard voices, from just down the hall. She was in a cell, all alone. She couldn’t see anyone else across from her. The room was dark, the only light coming in from weak torches, and what must have been stronger lanterns, down where she couldn’t see.

“Help,” Ink said, voice weak. 

She coughed, and then shuffled closer to the bars. 

“Hey!” Ink shouted. “Let me out of here!”

The voices went silent, and then Ink heard footsteps, coming in quickly. They sounded like they were wearing armour, steps heavy and noisy, and when they came into view she saw they were fully outfitted in metal plate. There were two, both human. Not unexpected, but certainly not a good sign. 

“Where am I?” Ink asked, looking between them. 

They looked to each-other, and not her. 

“Get the Seeker,” one said. 

 

—

 

Ink couldn’t keep her breath from hitching when they pointed their swords at her. She had trained with the Valo Kas, had faced people in combat before, but she was a mage. She was distance support. Rare were the days when an actual threat got near her with a blade. 

There more of them than there had been before, and she’d still not seen an elf or a qunari, or even a dwarf. 

She’d heard stories about what happened to qunari on their own. Whatever they thought she’d done, they’d slit her throat anyway. Cut off her horns for a trophy. She never should’ve left home. 

They stepped back abruptly when the woman… the Seeker… arrived, another human on her heels. She was severe-looking, anger in her eyes, cheek marked with a very deep scar. 

“Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you,” she said. 

Ink couldn’t think of anything to tell her. 

Her hand hurt so very badly. Worse every passing second. Had she broken it?

“How is it that only you survived the Conclave?” the Seeker asked. 

“What?” Ink asked. 

“Everyone at the Conclave, all slain, except for you,” the Seeker said. 

Ink looked at the ground. She’d travelled to the Conclave as something of an afterthought. She’d been a last-moment addition to a team that didn’t have a mage on it. Shokrakar had thought it would be good for her, to see a little more of Thedas, and work a little more independently. A few of the younger members had gone. Her friends…

“You’re lying,” Ink said, throat feeling thick. “I don’t believe you.”

“Do not play the wounded party,” the Seeker said. “If you have no part in it, how do you explain this?”

The Seeker grasped Ink’s left wrist in hand and held it up. Ink’s hand sparked green. The pain of it twisted up her arm, up and up and up.

Ink screamed. 

 

—

 

“Oh, Maker,” Cassandra said. 

Ink was smiling, her grin fit to split her face. Sera was no better. She was practically vibrating with happiness. 

“We got married!” Ink said. 

“Ahhh!” Sera said. 

“I… when?” Cassandra asked. 

“Just now!” Ink replied. 

“Just now.” Cassandra said. 

“S’what she said,” Sera replied. 

“I see, and given that she is presently in Antiva to the best of my knowledge, how did your mother feel about being unable to make it to the ceremony?” Cassandra asked. 

Ink stopped smiling. 

“I will confess, I am… a little sad, to not have been invited,” Cassandra said. 

“Well, it’s not that we didn’t… we just…” Sera said.

“We didn’t invite anyone,” Ink said. “We just, um, we just really wanted…”

“Yeah,” Sera said, looking towards Ink again. 

“My mum is going to kill me,” Ink said. 

“And Dorian.”

“I think Blackwall’ll just be really hurt.”

“Yeah, yeah probably.”

Cassandra sighed very loudly, and broke them from their reverie. 

“I am happy for you both,” she said. “Congratulations.”

Ink smiled again. 

“Thanks,” Ink said. “I just…”

She could see Cassandra rolling her eyes as Ink turned her gaze back to Sera. Sera was looking at her in the way she did, the way that made Ink want to climb something high or scream into her pillow or sing really loudly. 

“Sera, I love you so much,” Ink said. 

“You too, Tadwinks,” Sera said. “Like, forever.”

Cassandra made a noise of disgust when they kissed, but Ink was sure it was only because they were in public and using tongue, and Sera wound up wrapping her legs around Ink’s waist. 


End file.
